From The Yoza Project: Cellphones and ‘mlearning’ in South Africa: Continue reading

The Juxtaposium: Open Letter/Invitation to Event Organisers from Baruch Gottlieb, Brian Holmes, Alessandro Ludovico, Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum, Edward Schanken:

Curators, festival and symposia organizers, please use this letter as a starting point to help us develop together a new symposium format. Use our desire to speak about each other’s work and make it fuel the first “Juxtaposium”.

Time for change: Theoretical and critical reflection and exchange are fundamental strengths of New Media Art practice, and our tradition of festivals and symposia is part of that. But it is time to push beyond conventional formats and academic conventions for discussing our work. It is time to put aside polite camaraderie and pursue more critical forms of debate that will make constructive contributions to strengthening our practices and discourses. Continue reading

[Via Trebor Scholz on iDC]: “…When we survey the current state of education in the United States, we see that most universities are … run by administrators who often lack a broader vision of education as a force for strengthening civic imagination and expanding democratic public life. One consequence is that a concern with excellence has been removed from matters of equity, while higher education — once conceptualized as a fundamental public good — has been reduced to a private good, now available almost exclusively to those with the financial means. Universities are increasingly defined through the corporate demand to provide the skills, knowledge and credentials in building a workforce that will enable the United States to compete against blockbuster growth in China and other southeast Asian markets, while maintaining its role as the major global economic and military power. Continue reading

Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice [DIAP] MFA Program @ City College of New York (CUNY) :: Artist-in-Residence Project: Call for Applications — Deadline: January 15, 2011.

[DIAP] seeks an artist working in digital/interdisciplinary media for a three-month project residency from March 1 - May 30th, 2011. The [DIAP] Artist-in-residence position is an opportunity for an artist working in digital and interdisciplinary media to realize a creative project in residence at The City College of New York under the auspices of the Art Department’s soon-to-launch Master’s Program in Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice. Candidates should be emerging or mid-career artists interested in a research an collaboration agenda that focuses on digital and interdisciplinary media and which explores the relationship between technology and art. Continue reading

Audiovisual Thinking Journal is the world’s first journal of academic videos about audiovisuality, communication and media. The journal is a pioneering forum where academics and educators can articulate, conceptualize and disseminate their research about audiovisuality and audiovisual culture through the medium of video.

International in scope and multidisciplinary in approach, the purpose of Audiovisual Thinking is to develop and promote academic thinking in and about all aspects of audiovisuality and audiovisual culture. Advised by a board of leading academics and thinkers in the fields of audiovisuality, communication and the media, the journal seeks to set the standard for academic audiovisual essays now and in the future. Continue reading

From Victor Burgin in conversation with Hilde Van Gelder; Art and politics: A reappraisal, Eurozine: [...] “What you call the “academicization” of the arts would have been anathema to the old art schools, where the reigning ethos was rigorously anti-intellectual – I think of the painter Barnett Newman’s remark that philosophical aesthetics, to him, was what ornithology must be to a bird. The drive of successive British governments for standardization and centralized control of the universities not only imposed fundamentally alien and incompatible academic practices on the old art schools but, more perniciously, also undermined the very meaning and culture of research in the universities; in the same historical moment that the art schools were entering the university research environment, this environment itself was radically changing. When I first started teaching in Britain the art colleges and universities were under the “Ministry for Education and Science”, they are now administered by the “Department for Business, Innovation and Skills”…”

Safe Passage, the largest and most comprehensive new media project about human rights in Israel, allows the user to experience interactively the restrictions on movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and understand the grave consequences resulting from the separation of Gaza and the West Bank for people living in the two areas. Safe Passage makes innovative use of animation, Flash documents, video and a blog, and comprises a political and legal archive, including dozens of official documents that shed light on the military legislation and legal rulings since the 1990s, when Israel began imposing increasing restrictions on movement between the areas.

Users can choose one of three figures – a student, a businessman and a family man – to try to get to their chosen destinations. Continue reading

“I would say for both of us though, unschooling has been more about slowness, about paying attention, immersing ourselves bizarre art projects, volunteering, staring off into space, talking to friends, and reading books, reading books, reading books. We sometimes learned quickly, when motivated or excited to master some skill, but typically we learned at our own pace, which was often slow (sometimes so slow it looked as though we were doing nothing at all) and with lots of detours.”

“I know we’re excited about learning networks and social media and peer this and that. But maybe the most radical thing a teacher can do is tell students to be alone with an idea.” Continue reading

[Image: Jane D. Marsching, NOAA Web Cam, 2005/2007 (6 min. video with sound, collaboration with Victor McSurely)] NMC Media-N, Summer 2010, v.05 n.04 — New Media Caucus Panels and Events at the CAA Conference, Chicago, 2010. Panels:

New Media/New Terrain: Pioneering a PhD in Creative Research, Chair: Jessica Walker: To Ph.D or not to Ph.D? by Victoria Vesna :: Legitimizing the Ph.D. as Creative Research by Jonah Brucker-Cohen :: University of Washington, DXARTS by James Coupe.

Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change, and the Poles, Chairs: Jane Marsching & Andrea Polli: Airspace: The Practical Use of Radio in Antarctica by Andrea Polli Continue reading

The 26th Annual CHArt Conference: Technology and ‘the death of Art History’ :: November 10-11, 2010 :: London, UK :: Call for Papers — Deadline Extended: June 30, 2010.

In recent decades the traditional practices of Art History have come increasingly under attack. This has led to changes so extreme that some have talked of the ‘death of Art History’. The CHArt 2010 Conference wishes to explore the role of digital technologies in the disruption of Art History and the profound changes in the way that we display, consume and study art.

In 1985, when CHArt was founded, new technologies only had a minimal impact on Art History. Twenty-five years on they have transformed the entire artistic process, from the creation and presentation of art, to its reception, dissemination and research. Reflecting on these changes, we will consider how Art History has evolved and in what ways digital technologies will continue to affect and transform the discipline in the future. Continue reading